12/11/14 14:20
Improving Care Through Integration
Health Secretary outlines vision in speech to safety conference.
In a speech to the Scottish Patient Safety Programme National Conference this morning, Health Secretary Alex Neil outlined the benefits of getting people who may be unnecessarily staying in hospital, home to their communities.
The Health Secretary outlined an ambition to give back at least 200,000 days to individuals, families and communities by 2017 that would otherwise have been spent in hospital.
The NHS and social care services with their partners from Third sector, housing and independent sectors will be tasked with bringing forward ideas to provide better access to treatment, rehabilitation, care and support in local communities, preventing unnecessary admission to hospital and stays that are longer than they need to be.
Mr Neil said:
“Sometimes hospital is absolutely the best place to be for patients and the only place where they can receive suitable care. Our protection of the NHS budget and recruitment of record levels of staff, means these people will go on receiving world class care.
“But we know that often people are admitted to or stay in hospital when they could be better cared for in the community or at home. My aim for our health and social care in simple, to reduce the number of people who are unnecessarily in hospital. and could be better cared for at home or in a homely setting.
“With the integration health and social care being taken forward there is already a huge amount of work underway to transform care services so that it helps meet this aim, and we’ll be seeking to develop and expand the systems which work to prevent hospital admissions and get folk home as quickly and safely as possible.
“We want to ensure that people get to spend more time within their own communities and with their friends and family. The real benefit of this will be for the individual patient as they get the right care in the right place and more quickly get on the road to recovery.”
The improvement expertise of the NHS, local government and the Scottish Government will be tasked with leading the ambitious programme. The improvement methodologies that have delivered substantial improvements on patient safety and the substantial steps already made to reduce unnecessary number of days older people spend in hospital will be used. This will include looking for local developments and solutions, then spreading best practice.
This aim to reduce the number of days people unnecessarily spend in hospital by 200,000 emulates a successful programme in Ko Awatea, New Zealand, which reduced unnecessary bed days in their region by 20,000 days through a similar programme.